A Visit To Silver Cave In Yangshuo, China.
As you know, Yangshuo was not our most favourite spot in China; full of tourists, loaded with rip-off vendors and hundreds of cable lines which disturb the otherwise beautiful landscape. But after all, we were there for 2 days and thought we’d still make the best of it.
After a cruise along the Li River (on which we were more than disturbed by Chinese brats trying to shoot us with water guns) and a visit to Moon Hill (which was the best sight in the entire area because no tourist was ready to walk over 700 stairs up a mountain), Silver Cave was our next destination (not that we’re fans of caves but it was a rainy day so there wasn’t any other choice).
We could only guess what would expect us there … Anyway, not realizing how far the cave actually was away from the center of Yangshuo, we hired a tuk-tuk driver for 40 Yuan. At first he seemed happy to have customers on this rainy day (even though he didn’t appreciate our bargaining methods) but after about 20 minutes on the road, he didn’t seem all that excited any more … and neither were we because we started freezing our asses off! After another 10 minutes, I feared he would leave us standing on the side of the street. He could only hope for customers at the Silver Cave otherwise this trip wouldn’t be good for business.
After 40 minutes, the tuk-tuk driver turned left and big signs welcomed us … which was not a good sign because that meant Silver Cave was yet just another overrun tourist attraction. Now we had two choices: to run or to get ready for combat. We went for the last one … and after all, the cave itself is pretty impressive: The Silver Cave is the biggest cave in the entire Guilin area. Being of typical Karst landforms, it runs through 12 peaks and collects diverse stalactites that formed in different geologic ages. The main cave stretches for more than 10 km and inside the cave there are two layers, including the land part and the water part that is a crystal-clear subterranean river on which it’s allowed to take a boat trip (no we didn’t do that!).
After about 35 minutes of walking through the cave, I felt the need for fresh oxygen and we quickly made our way to the exit. What awaited us there was a walkway through souvenir shops – no short cut available believe us!
